“Alone, with you” is my first solo release as B.Aware. It features guitar playing by Dan O’ Works, cover art lettering by master sign painter Mark Casey — founder of Detroit's Casey Sign Company — and additional photography by family friend Lynn Hansen Maslowski. Remixes were produced by Malik Alston and Zen Zero. Many of the artists freely volunteered their time and talents and I’m humbled by the generosity. 

I began writing “Alone, with you” at the start of a major low period in my life. Inspired by an ill-fated vacation, it’s a story about a couple in paradise who’ve lost their connection despite physical closeness. Have you ever been there? Near someone, yet hopelessly distant from them, no path back to certainty and comfort? That’s the undercurrent here: on a beautiful beach with a knot in your stomach. While the lyrics emerged collapsed and hopeless, the music burst forth as a funky, vibrant dance tune. I usually dance to get through sadness; expressing myself with movement as a way of moving forward with life. We even danced during that vacation, albeit wildly and self-destructive. I literally had to be carried back to our hotel. My hope is that in some frayed little corner of the world, someone hacking through a jungle of their own pain hears this song and feels understood.

Wise friends helped light my way through the dark years that followed, but I untangled the knot of my life largely alone. Most of my peers hadn’t yet experienced separating from a long-term partner, so I had to look within to rebuild an identity and rediscover what mattered to me. After stumbling for many months, a simple but life-changing idea emerged: I’d treat my personal relationship with myself as a close and loving friendship, starting by giving myself the same advice I’d give to a good friend, and following that advice whenever possible. The idea of being “alone” gradually evolved into something different than being “lonely” until, in a single vivid moment on my couch one evening, my heart cracked open. I felt this deep, unshakable connection to everything and everyone: those whose paths had diverged from mine, people I’d never met, animals, plants, stars, the air, the bodies of trees cut down a hundred years ago which now gave me shelter. I wasn’t just part of the universe (“uni" meaning “one”), I was the universe. A constant melancholy I’d felt since youth, fell away like a snake’s skin or a butterfly’s chrysalis. How could I possibly feel lonely when so many others felt this same way at the same moment? Loneliness was me ignoring the rest of the universe, the rest of who I was. It became absurd, even laughable, any time the familiar lonely feelings crept into my head.

“Alone, with you” opens with a recording of wild birds on my grandfather’s porch in northern Michigan. Captured eight months after my grandmother’s passing, and two years after my journey into alone-ness — back into one-ness — began. I’d had the idea to record an interview with my Grandpa Edward to help find guidance in my own life story, but I didn’t anticipate how painfully raw his sense of loss was at that moment, how disconnected he felt, and how ready to die he was. I stayed at his house for three days, asking for wisdom on the topic of “love” and gaining tremendous insight into his life and 66-years with my grandmother. The quiet moments we shared between interviews were beyond precious to me, not because of what we said, but because of how we appreciated each other’s presence in silence, sometimes with a knowing look, always with understanding — even if I couldn’t truly appreciate the depths of his pain. In the weeks immediately following my grandma’s death, grandpa had started receiving regular morning serenades from a little bird outside his bedroom window. My aunts would say it was grandma checking in to make sure he was okay, signing him sweet love songs. I made recordings of the birds on grandpa’s porch, sitting alone, supremely connected to the world. Grandpa’s birds appear in the song as a reminder to myself that we’re all alone, all together.

In the years that followed, grandpa’s sense of connection to the world returned. Miraculously one spring I called him and he told me the doctors had graduated him out of hospice care! Past the age of 90 he would travel outside of Michigan for the first time in over 28 years, visiting his nephew in Washington state. Grandpa Edward died in 2021 before the release of “Alone, with you”, nine days after we celebrated his 96th birthday together. Audio from our interview - where he speaks directly to those seeking love and happiness - appears on Malik Alston's remix.

Being present with another person is one of the greatest gifts you can give, but if you can’t be present with someone else, give the gift of presence to yourself… Alone, with you.